Marriage Matters: Bats are not in the job description

Saturday

May 24, 2014 at 6:00 AM

Although shy, Audora is a gutsy woman. But the thought of facing down a bat in our daughter’s bedroom, at midnight, while Jim was out of town, was just too much. So before the battle even began, she surrendered.

By James and Audora Burg

Although shy, Audora is a gutsy woman. But the thought of facing down a bat in our daughter’s bedroom, at midnight, while Jim was out of town, was just too much. So before the battle even began, she surrendered. Being married to Mr. D.I.Y., she had initially decided she would handle this on her own, but changed her mind after consulting Mr. Google and reading about leather gloves and bat bites and rabies (oh, my!).After spending a mostly sleepless night worrying about how she could safely and efficiently get the flying, squeaking thing out of a house in the midst of a three-day reduction in the grownup population, the online consult emphatically confirmed her inclination to outsource the issue to a professional bat wrangler. So the next day, as the bat was in the process of being uneventfully removed by someone who knew what he was doing, a variation on the pre-World War II British motivational poster, “Keep calm and carry on” came to mind, “Keep calm and mommy on.” Part of keeping calm was knowing her limits. As a mother, she has tackled a wide range of nasty tasks. Toxic waste diapers? No problem. Mopping up after a sick child? Eww, but she can handle it. But confronting this one, a living creature who could cause harm, was not a risk she was willing to assume. Knowing what you can handle in marriage is a vital skill. It is certainly possible to endure unpleasant times and stumble through the process of learning better skills. Yet knowing when to call in help is critical to survival. When worn down by life’s events, it is easy to spiral out of control and to feel like the whole world is bleak. We rely on our relationship to be our safe haven from life’s storms, so when it feels like those storms pop up within our safe haven, we feel lost. Last weekend, between work and family burdens, we reached a point where our bliss went missing. We grumped at each other. We distanced from each other. We expanded the present issues to past hurts. It was not a good example of conflict resolution. We called in help in the form of a babysitter and we took ourselves out for a few hours. Away from kids, from responsibility and to-dos and distractions, we were able to talk and to listen, to focus on each other and shore up our Us. There was a bit more work to do after that, but the immediate points of contention were unraveled and set right. More than that, we felt empowered to finish the work because we had regained the confidence we were both on the same side. And then came the bat…

James Burg, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Indiana University-Purdue, Fort Wayne. His wife, Audora, is a freelance writer. You may contact them at marriage@charter.net.